But Donald........Reliability is something you come to depend on as a matter of fact. Your car could be a jalopy and work fine today. But if it had an over stressed front control arm hinge pin (and you knew about it) your car would still "work" today but would you classify it as reliable and be able to say....."Oh what the heck..lets take that 1800 mile trip in the mountains; that pin win never break"?

I would suspect you may get it fixed.

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As a side lite.....also stemming from the car analogy....there are many many people, especially here in Minnesota, that drive 10->15 year old cars that have been exposed to many winters of excessive salt on the freeways. These cars very often have rust scale that has reduced the thickness and strength of the metal parts on the underside of the car by a significant amount. Many of the drivers have little knowledge that their cars are no longer safe because the parts are now operating outside of thier original design parameters. For example I recently had the front brake rotors changed on a '95 car, that I had acquired. The rotors were the type made hollow inside for air cooling. Salt snow/ice water gets in there in the winter and then the heat of the brakes makes an extreme study in chemistry to occur. The rotors had less than 1/2 the original thickness in each face. (new ones are over 0.250 inches thick and re-surfacing of used rotors is permitted to take about 0.030 inches off). How safe was it to have rusty rotors at about 0.125 thickness when the manufacturers recommendation is to not go below 0.220 inches?

Michael Karas